Norman Maclean Quotes

Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.

Minds that are ill at ease are agitated by both hope and fear.

Fear has governed my life, if I think about it.

Solitude terrifies the soul at twenty.

If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn't be so anxious.

I went through real darkness, but the ring was my light. That was the one place I felt safe. I could control what happened in the ring. My heart turned icy.

My work in general involves getting over my fears that are deeply embedded since childhood: Fear of darkness, fear of dangerous activities in general, and fear of dirt - I had a considerable obsessive compulsive disorder as a child.

Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.

My dark secrets are life threatening. Pockets of unhappiness set in aspic that build and build. I have this primitive feeling that if something good happens, it is going to be followed by something bad. There is always a price to pay.

Until I really accepted this about myself and got over any of my own transphobia that I had, I really felt like I wouldn't be accepted. I thought I would ruin my life.

It can be frightening. I think, 'I don't want to go.' But I give myself room to grieve.

Everybody's darkness is different. My darkness came from my mom having pancreatitis and almost dyin'. And what I noticed was that the darkness ain't goin' nowhere.

As much as I dream, I have nightmares.

By running from what we fear, we feed the inner darkness

The very thing that drives you, can drive you insane Got a head full of thought crimes and a number with no name Got an eleventh hour Jesus and a mouth full of blame A casket lined with silver dollars and a number with no name.

Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?

After I binged last night -or was it tonight - I was convinced yet again that there were people coming to get me. It was more than just shadows and voices, more than just fantasies....it was real, and I was scared to my core.My bones were shaking...m heart was pounding...I thought I was going to explode. I'm glad I have you to talk to, to write this down. I tried to keep it all together, but then I gave in to the manes and became one with my insanity.

How sick i am! that thought Always comes to me with horror. Is it this strange for everybody? But such fugitive feelings have always been my metier.

We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.

I’m afraid to close my eyes, I’m afraid to open them

Are you afraid of falling, baby? No, I’m afraid of landing. [He’s laughing, and I’m smiling.] Stupid idiot smile, don’t you know what comes next?

Rincewind tried to force the memory out of his mind, but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants and kicking over the furniture.

Fear is the emotion that makes us blind.

I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.

Mazer, i don't want to keep dreaming these things. I'm afraid to sleep. I keep thinking of things i don't want to remember. My whole life keeps playing out as if i were a recorder and someone else wanted to watch the most terrible parts of my life